Thursday, September 01, 2011

How To Succeed

I get pummeled with email, often from people either thanking me or asking me things.

Here's a quick encapsulation of the questions I get, and how I'd reply if I had the time.

Q: What's the secret to selling a lot of ebooks?

Joe: There is no secret. Write good books, with good descriptions, good formatting, and good cover art, sell them cheap, and keep at it until you get lucky.

Q: I have an ebook, but it isn't selling well. What should I do to market it?

Joe: Write another ebook, and another, and keep at it until you get lucky.

Q: I've changed my cover art 56 times, but sales are still flat.

Joe: You need to keep writing until you get lucky.

Q: Joe, I've followed your blog, and you're the reason I decided to self-publish. How did you get so many sales?

Joe: I kept at it until I got lucky.

Q: Joe, you're a pioneer. A hero. A guru. You deserve all the success you've gotten. To what do you attribute your success?

Joe: I simply got lucky.

Q: You talk about luck a lot. How do I improve my chances at getting lucky?

Joe: Keep writing good books, with good descriptions, good formatting, and good cover art, and sell them cheap.

Q: Aren't talent and hard work more important than luck?

Joe: They can help you get lucky.

Q: I've done everything you say, but I'm still not selling. What's the problem?

Joe: You haven't gotten lucky yet.

Q: Isn't the self-pubbing road was paved with riches?

Joe: No one deserves to make money writing. The world doesn't owe you a living, and you aren't entitled to huge sales. You simply need to work at it, until you get lucky.

Q: How long does it take to get lucky?

Joe: It took me twenty years and over two million written words.

Q: What if I never get lucky?

Joe: Then you didn't try hard enough, or long enough. Or maybe your writing simply isn't good enough.

Not everyone can be a Major League Baseball player. It takes a combination of traits, including luck.

But everyone seems to think they can be an author, simply because they can string some words together.

Some poorly written ebooks will sell well, just like some poorly written legacy books sell well. But if you write shit, you're harming your chances at getting lucky.

I believe cream will rise to the top, and shit will sink. Ebooks are the perfect opportunity to test this theory, because there are no longer any barriers to entry. Prior to ebooks, legacy gatekeepers decided what got published, and even then many good books failed to find an audience because they never had the proper chance to.

Ebooks have an infinite shelf life, and ebooks stores have infinite shelf space. If your book is good, it has forever to be discovered.

Forever is a long time to find an audience.

Q: Can it really take forever to be successful?

Joe: I wrote the book ORIGIN in 1999. It's the book that landed me an agent. She tried mightily to sell it on three separate occasions, in 1999, 2005, and 2008, garnering more than fifty rejections by every major house in NY.

Right now, ORIGIN is ranked #274 in the Kindle store, and has received over one hundred 5 star reviews. I've sold tens of thousands of copies.

It took more than ten years for ORIGIN to find its audience. I'm going to write a sequel to it, because I get so much fan mail about that book.

You can quit if you want to. Or you can stick with it until you get lucky.

The are no easy answers. No quickie fixes. No direct paths to success.

No one is forcing you to do this. You have to love it, and to believe in yourself. Even when you fail.

Especially when you fail.

If you aren't failing, you aren't trying hard enough.

And if you aren't trying hard, it's going to take a lot longer to get lucky.

117 comments:

I enjoyed that - there is quite a bit of truth to that. I am spending a lot of time, not just writing, but building websites, shooting video, and combing the far reaches of Thailand for Buddhist amulets to sell with the same thing in mind... I want to get lucky too. Cheers to those who work their nubs numb until they get lucky.

Just goes to show that with ebooks, as with everything else, there is hard work and luck involved....who'd have thought? Yet too many people think ebooks are a way to riches without putting in the work.

My Western "Ghost Dance" was originally published in 1997, and now it's doing well in Kindle, espec. in the UK. But the work was put in years ago, much like you "Origin", Joe.

Thanks for the frank reminder. Too many other books and websites promise untold riches for aspiring writers from the moment they finish their first short story. It's a good idea to remember that success is not a foregone conclusion. But, as Woody Allen once said "Success involves luck. But the harder I work, the luckier I seem to get."

I went to my first writers' conference and everyone who'd been published traditionally was asked how they found an agent since that's the step that most of us at the conference still needed to take. Everyone that I heard answer the question said some variation of "Don't go by me. I got lucky."

It was very discouraging, at least to me, that so much of the traditional publishing world was reliant on luck. Lucky enough to find an agent who likes your work. That agent being lucky enough to find an editor that likes your book. That editor being lucky enough to sell it to the publishing house to take it on. Then, after all that luck, hoping you're lucky enough that your book will find an audience.

I decided that, even though I know ultimately there's an element of luck involved in all of this no matter how you publish, I'd rather control making my own luck. Because what a lot people call luck other call persistence.

I would say that I'm off to write, but the kid still isn't back in school due to Hurricane Irene. We used up two "snow days" so far this year. OTOH, if he have a winter like last year, I won't have to worry about summer camp in 2012, because he won't get out of school until August!

Thanks Joe! Good advice. I agree with you. I get a little annoyed too with new writers who release their novels for sale one day and expect to become rich the next. It doesn't happen that way. When it comes to success in this business, patience is a virtue.

Perseverance = luck over time. I think that this is the key to self publishing success. If you look at Amanda Hocking or John Locke it took them both quite awhile to breakthrough. And Merz just rocked the publishing world by signing to Simon and Schuster and retaining ALL of his ebook rights.

Never believed in luck as a way to succeed. That says to me that any idiot can get a book to sell millions of copies just by mere chance. I think it's more about showing up enough times so beat down resistance. Its the 10K hours (or 3 million words in your case) idea.

"Cream will rise, shit will sink." A perfectly accurate description of what will happen. Those with talent & perseverance will succeed thanks to greater opportunity.

Umm...doesn't this "you have to get lucky" comment sorta make hash of your posts that apparently say any author who doesn't e-publish is a jerk because e-publishing automatically means big money for the author? Just askin'...

I think of life in terms of math. That's why I love this post. While some people may see luck as some kind of magic, I see it as a probability of a certain event happening - in this case, making it big.

So what are the chances I can improve my probability of making it big? The more I write, the better I get, the better my chances are to make it big. The more stories I write, the more chances I get to have more readers, the better my chances are to make it big. I think your post demonstrated that quite nicely.

Luck is not some magic pill one takes to get there, it's the little things they can do in life to improve their chances of getting there!

Interesting that you use "Origin" as your example of a novel of yours taking time to find an audience, Joe. That was the book that turned me on to your fiction, and remains my favourite - when it comes to your style of sci-fi horror, I have "target audience" written all over me.

It was only last year I came across "Origin". Since then I've recommended it to several friends, and bought most of your backlist on the strength of my enjoyment of "Origin".

Luck and perseverance might play a huge role in becoming a successful author, but I think good story-telling will always grow your original audience. A happy reader is a loyal reader, and word of mouth's a powerful thing.

It surprises me that no legacy publisher would think there'd be a market for your sci-fi horror when you consider the success of so many sci-fi horror movies: Aliens, Terminator, The Thing, to name a few.

I know film is a different media, but I've always believed that cinema informs written fiction, just as novels inform movies, and both share a similar demographic. Take the zombie craze - wildly popular concurrently in both film and books. I love Scott Sigler's technique of "cinematising" his novels - making a movie trailer, not to advertise a film of his novels, but to advertise his books.

Despite it being a slow-burn success, I do hope you're planning a sequel to "Origin". It's crying out for another story.

I said something similar to a friend the other. He asked me when I planned to send my first novel off to my editors and then asked if I was hopeful about money. I told him money money was important to me, but not the most important. The act of creation and sculpting worlds where the reader can happily get lost was thing I loved the most.

Joe, you are correct. I write. Will I ever make enough to quit the day job? I don't know. I hope so, but in my opinion, hope should be reserved for things out of our control. What is in my control is penning the best work I can, polishing it, having it edited well, getting good cover art, and proper formatting.

If my first novel, or second, or third never sell well, that's ok, not great, but ok. I'm in this because of a simple love of the act. A lack of sales won't stop me for that simple reason.

I will write and hopefully the the burning of the fat on this alter will make enough smoke that the reading public can one day no longer ignore me. If it doesn't, then ok - I've still got my work and my love for the written word. It isn't, for me, a resignation or comfort with economic failure so much as it is knowing that for my part, writing the stuff that I do is wonderful enough in itself for me.

And here's the moment of profound enlightenment. Write and publish. It's that simple!

I don't have to worry about all that promotion crap (reading John Locke at the moment), I just have to keep writing. I love writing. I can do that.

In the past, I used to run up against a wall when publishers didn't want to publish what I wrote or killed the books they did publish with indifference. No more! I write and I publish what I write electronically. And in time luck will follow.

So much talk of getting lucky, I forgot that I was reading about self publsihing and starting thinking of other things. I do need to get lucky,,,,, but not in the kindle store. I will get lucky there in time.

To be successful in legacy publishing, you have to write well and be lucky. To be successful in eSP you have to write well and be lucky. At least in eSP we can better our odds of being lucky by repetition, and once lucky we get a much larger percentage.

Therefore, to increase my odds, I'm going to see if I can paste in the URLs of my two e-offerings, at this page on my website:

It's true. I was an actor and we knew we had to pay dues and hope to get a break. No one ever asked another actor how he found success - HE GOT LUCKY. Authors seem to have entitlement stamped on their foreheads now.

First off, thanks Joe. I just got my first book up at Amazon and worked with your ebook designers--amazing work by awesome people.

Now a question: What are your thoughts about the Amazon Associates program?

Love to hear from you but welcome thoughts from anyone on the thread as well. Not sure if the program is limited to placing a widget on my author site for my book or promoting Amazon products in general.

This is why there will be no 'race to the bottom.' Too many will give up. Although perhaps that is a few less than should. ;)

I've also said that midlist authors are better off self-pubbing because they'll earn more money than they would in a legacy deal.And this is why I love this post. It will create more 'mid-list' authors. Authors who will publish and find their niche; hopefully making a decent living doing something they love.

I read mostly mid-list.

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. ~Thomas JeffersonAnd Fortune favors the bold. ;)

People don't tend to pay a lot for out of copyright books.People pay enough. The fact that a book, even a public domain one, is sold by the author, or the author's heirs will continue to count and affect people's choices forever. Even now every ebook on ebook bestseller lists can be found on piracy sites. They will continue to appear there. People already make the choice to buy from the author rather than get one free. When the magic date of ebook going out of copyright passes, do you imagine so much will change? Would you not prefer to buy Hamlet directly from Shakespeare's heirs' place, even today, if they were nice people? Even if copyright was today reduced to 5 years after ebook release, I don't expect it would influence sales much. Certainly less than author's attitude towards his readers would influence them.

Isn't it strange how in life the luckiest people are more often than not the ones who work the hardest! Except for the lottery, of course..... You are so right. Work hard, do good work, and eventually you'll make it.... That applies to pretty much everything in life. Except for the lottery, of course....

Love to hear from you but welcome thoughts from anyone on the thread as well. Not sure if the program is limited to placing a widget on my author site for my book or promoting Amazon products in general.

I have several widgets on my blog: One for my own books, one for books for writers, and one for general fantasy books for readers; I also refer to books or whatever in my blog posts on occasion, and I do the link thing there, too.

It's convenient to do on a Blogger blog; the Amazon linking mechanism is to your right as you write a post.

Have I made any money off it? No, but I really don't care at this point; I've been doing it for years now, so it's just a ritual now. :-)

I'm sure people don't want to hear about luck being a big factor. It is true that good storytelling has a ton to do with it. But as anyone who has raised a good idea in a classroom and watched as five minutes later someone else parrots your idea and gets all of the credit for it knows, life isn't always fair.

I'm going to focus on finishing my series (or at least getting to book 4 of 5) before I start to market the hell out of it.

I got to tell the world I exist. No, wait, first I clean up any stray typos (done! I hope), format my files for all readers, get myself up everywhere (done and done), do a little bit with three covers, and Alice! XXX just needs a new cover, because Kitt done cleaned my clock with her cover.

I need to get my third book revamped and on, which will probably be in the next two weeks, and then I get to scream to the world I exist for the next year or more. That's my idea of luck. That and I need my next two books done and out. Plus, more books done.

I just cried reading this, because it's true that you just have to keep writing, and writing well. Practice.

So does the fact that I cried mean I'm not thick-skinned enough to be a writer? Probably. Crap.

Sorry, but I have been working really hard at my writing and I do know that book sales aren't going to make me feel any different about my books. In other words, I don't need acceptance from the public, or criticism to know how hard I'm working. To know how much I'm killing my migraine head because I'm a writer!

Another fab post! I love reading this blog because so much of it seems to be down-to-earth common-sense, which makes it all seem much more achievable.

Er.... for the record, I think I just got lucky in the UK last week as my fantasy ebook has leapt up to #134 in the UK Kindle store (though not in the American one).... Now all I have to do is not let the luck get away...no stress there then!

So my plan is to get a move on with the editing of Books 2 and 3 and the first paperback copy in time to start writing 4 in November - and figure out how the hell you get lucky in the US!

I figure this is my pension plan as by the time I'm that old I'll have written enough books to be making a living, hopefully - but y'know, if retirement came early I wouldn't be in the least bit upset...my dayjob gets RIGHT in the way of my writing!

An inspirational post! Thanks and congratulations on achieving your dream. I'm okay with the hard work part, now I could use some luck. http://deborahgoemans.blogspot.com/2011/01/feet-sole-journey.html

Joseph, Thanks for writing, I like your blog very much.I'm wondering if you feel that children's fiction can go the same way re e-publishing - the biggest consideration being that they dont have the same spending freedom on the net.Can you suggest any further reading? Or perhaps organise a guest blog?Thanks againTanya

Joe, you know that we disagree about "luck". IF you have a quality product than perseverance will make it eventually succeed. Put in your terms....Keep putting it out there until you get lucky. We are really saying the same things with differnt words.

This was such a funny and awesome blog article. I'm published and finding it hard to get my head around writing another book while doing all the work that pays my rent (hint: getting published hasnt helped much with that yet). Thanks very much for making me smile today and get on with writing! Abby :)

As I wander lonely round the cloud I'm amazed at just how many readers and comments all these various blogs on ebooks and ebook authors get. It gives an indication of just how big the market for ebooks is.

Just wanted to thank you Joe for being an inspiration to me. I came across your blog by chance earlier this year and though it took quite a while, I have read most of your postings. Your insight in to writing, publishing and eBooks has been incredibly valuable to me and now I find myself really looking forward to your next post. I took your advice and finally published my first eBook - A Collection of Short Stories - written by robots; by James Aldridge.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/80776

and even started my own blog -

http://ebookwritermagnet.blogspot.com/

It has all been a fascinating process to go through. I agree with you on hard work and luck. I am a firm believer in hard work - even though you may be working a tough job, have a hectic home life, and might not have much free time to write or promote your work, if you want to succeed at anything you really have to find the time and make the effort. Right now I have a Mom with Alzheimer's to deal with, a chaotic job, I coach football and there is a major wildfire trying to burn down the city I live in (Austin), but I still try to find the time to work at this - with my hard work and some luck I will succeed. Thanks again Joe for the excellent work - you are an inspiration to all of us who want to find success.

Your advice sounds a great deal like the recent book ADAPT by Tim Harford (who writes "The Undercover Economist"). I agree with it. Prepare, perform, and persist -- that's the key, because none of us can choose whether or not today's a lucky day. We can only choose whether or not we're prepared for it to be on the off chance it is.

Thank you for your most informative blog -- not just this post, but all of them. I found your blog today as it looks like I'll be self-publishing my urban fantasy novel at some point early in 2012, once I understand what I'm doing. (Novel is complete. Has been for over eight years. Co-written with my husband, who's been dead for seven. I have continued to write and will never stop writing even though the process is far different with my husband dead; I will never stop and never give up.)

This is such a great post! Two often we forget that you don't get to be CEO (or president) of a company overnight. Equally, developing a career as a writer takes time. And the surest way to fail is to give up...

‘You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.’Octavia E. Butler, American Novelist, 1947-2006

‘The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.’Napoleon Hill, American Writer, 1883-1970

I started publishing in 2006 after writing for 20 years and trying to get published through conventional means. I wrote blogged, I promoted, I joined online forums, I marketed like crazy, I wrote 14 books and my sales were pitiful.

In September 2011 I got lucky and sold 1000 books. In October I got luckier and sold 3,000. December was my luckiest month and I sold 8,400. So far January looks like my luckiest month yet with 7,000 so far and 2 weeks to go.